Scarlet Dust Of Another Sunrise
by Paper Lilly Webs
Summary: -Karkat Vantas was finally leaving this shit-hole he called a life, and he had every intention of staying the fuck away. A meet-up with his oldest friend could in no way hinder his bolt for freedom, and a quick smoke with a certain blonde could not convince him to stay.- Implied DaveKat, but mostly just friendship. T for swearing, smoking and run aways. Warning: drabble.


-Pardon the cheesy title-

**Warning**: Slight mentions towards romance, but they get absolutely nowhere, and you can really just pass it off as friendship if you want.

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He yanked on his sweatshirt, zipping it and pulling up the hood before turning back to his knapsack and stuffing several extra sets of clothes into it. Adding shoes, toothbrush and paste, a couple good books and his PSP, as well as a pair of fingerless gloves, he pulled the drawstring closed tightly and swung it over his shoulder.

Karkat Vantas was finally leaving this shit-hole he called a life, and he had every intention of staying the fuck away.

He took one last look around his room, which was very clean for a teenager his age, and memorized the placement of everything, as if he'd actually miss it. Downstairs, something crashed to the floor, signaling his mother's return from the bar, and he quickly turned towards the window, opening it silently. He knew it was safe to leave when his mother got home.

He crouched on the windowsill, red eyes gauging the distance between his room and the dead tree, before leaping across to it confidently, as he had done many times before. Pausing momentarily on the branch to make sure he wasn't caught on anything and that his bag remained closed, he started jumping down, bending and sliding easily down the white bark, hands and feet knowing exactly where to go.

He landed in the dust of the Texan desert, on the edge of the metal paddock that used to house his and Kankri's horses before their parents had sold them. Dead shrubs littered the path running between the metal fence-lines of his family ranch, and the Zahhaks'.

He stood there for a minute, savoring the cool air of the very early morning, knowing the blistering sun would be up within the next three hours or so. He pushed down his hood, habitually puffing his snow-white bangs out of his eyes before looking both ways down the road. It was a rather wide path, but not big enough for the four-wheelers rusting away in his brother's barn, but enough for two people to walk side-by-side comfortably.

Slowly inhaling the scent of dust and desert, he made sure neither of the Zahhak boys were looking out their windows before taking a right, walking down the path towards the train tracks that cut through the property about three miles back. A freight carrier would be barreling by at eight, his only chance of getting a ride until the next week, but he had several hours, so walked slowly. The sunlight was only just peeking up over the hills, a thin line of peachy-orange against the cobalt sky. Soon, the sky'd be scarlet, his favorite part of the sunrise.

As he walked, the path slowly got wider, and the iron of his family's fences became the wood on the abandoned ranch marking the end of the private-owned property. Half-way down the rotting fence-line was an old apple tree, where he and Dave used to play as kids. As they got older, of course, the playing turned into just sitting, smoking if Dave was able to get a pack from his brother.

And then seemed to be one of those times, as he saw a line of smoke curling from the other side of the trunk, Dave's favorite spot to lean against the fence. Sure enough, as he got close enough, the shaded blonde looked up from his lounging, and nodded in greeting, pulling the cigarette from his mouth to hold it in between his fingers.

"Makara told me you'd planned on leavin'," He drawled in his true Texan twang. Karkat sighed, shaking his head with a slight smile before silently hopping up onto the high fence next to him, in between the Strider and the tree.

"Can't keep his mouth shut, the fucking clown."

"He was concerned you hadn't thought this through." He paused, as if he expected Karkat to answer, but the albino didn't. "_Have_ you thought this through?" The shorter boy stayed quiet for several beats.

"Dad's filing for a divorce."

"Oh. Well then."

"Yeah." Karkat accepted the cigarette offered to him with a snort, sighing again and clamping it in his lips before leaning forward to light the end with Dave's offered lighter. "Shit dude, I thought we agreed to quit." Dave laughed, slipping the lighter back into his pocket.

"We've never followed through with anything in our lives, Vantass." The albino snorted again, and looked up to face the sunrise.

"'Cept this." Dave fell silent, eyeing the sky as well, pausing mid-drag.

"Yeah... 'Cept this." He let the smoke out, the two watching it fade into nothing.

Karkat had never been able to label his relationship with Dave. It wasn't friendship, and it wasn't brotherhood; no, it was something more than that. Want? Need? The albino didn't know; all he knew was Dave was the only one to pick him up when he fell down.

Dave had lived in this backwater town his entire life, and Karkat for most of that. Dave lived more downtown, in the sole-apartment building with his weird-as-fuck brother, while Karkat lived up in the "farmland", as the blonde ironically called it, with his own brother and his parents. Sometimes Karkat wondered how the hell they had agreed to marry each other and have two fucking kids, 'cause by the time Karkat rolled around, they hated each other with a fiery passion.

Dave knew what it was like to have fighting parents, but his bro saved him from that. Kankri just up and ditched Karkat to go to college in Houston, leaving him with the other lonely kid without parents to return home to. They'd been friends, for lack of a better term, since second grade, and had done practically everything together. They studied together, watched TV together, ate out his bro's fridge together, and just sat together. It wasn't often they could both sneak away down to the apple tree they'd claimed as their own, not with the Zahhak boys always ratting on Karkat, but they made do, each rebelling against their lives in their own way.

It was an unspoken bond they shared, marked by the countless hours spent together, by the stud in Dave's nose to match the one in Karkat's lip, by the cigarette butts littering the ground surrounding the tree. Karkat couldn't call it friendship, because friends smiled and laughed with each other, paraded around like their happiness could infect others; he and Dave were silent, smiles few and far between.

Karkat wouldn't have changed it for the world.

"So, where do you plan on goin'?" The albino looked down from his brooding, not realizing the sun had risen more, turning the hill-line a tangerine orange.

"'Houston," He answered, watching the blonde carefully for his reaction; he got none.

"Mm, and what do you plan on doin' there once you get there?" Karkat looked back away, shrugging.

"I dunno. I just know I have to get out of here." He saw dave nod out of his peripheral, stomping out his cigarette before pulling out another and lighting it.

"You gonna finish high school?" Again, he just shrugged. "Karkles, you're only seventeen, and just barely. How're you going to find a job?"

"I'll work something out."

"So no, you haven't thought this through."

"You know I've been planning this for years, Dave. I've been saving money since I was ten, and got my driver's license, and made copies of any documents I might need to get myself hired. I've been thinking about this since, well, since forever. You didn't really think I'd stay in this hell-hole forever, did you?" Dave took a long drag and looked down, only sign of his annoyance being the tightness of his fingers around the cigarette.

"Yeah, but after ten years of knowin' ya, 'thought I'd finally convinced you to stay." Karkat frowned at the slight anger in his voice, rolling his own cigarette over his lips in thought.

"Dave, I can't stay here. I'll suffocate. I'll fucking drown in all the bullshit if I don't get out now." The blonde sighed, and if Karkat didn't know him better, he would have said Dave sounded dejected.

"I know," He muttered. "You were always too good for this place." He looked back up, straight ahead of him as he let out a breath of smoke through his nose. "You deserve better than this."

Karkat fell quiet in the wake of his words, picking through the other boy's tones to decipher their meaning. In the end, he gave up, sighing and leaving the blonde to his mysteries.

"And it's not like I won't keep in touch. I've got my phone, and my laptop." Dave snorted.

"We both know you won't. Not when you're all 'starry-eyed city-boy'." The albino kicked his protest against Dave's shoulder, making a quiping noise in the back of his throat and earning a laugh from the blonde.

"Asshole, you're my~... bestfriend. I'm not going to ditch you for some dick I meet in Houston."

"What was with the falter there, Vantass. Got someone else on your mind?" Unlike all of his previous teasings, Dave sounded relatively serious, no smirk breaking his nicotine-chapped lips.

"'Course not. We both know you're the only who puts up with my bullshit." He'd hesitated because bestfriend hadn't been enough, but he could find no other word to describe him.

He did crack a smile at that though, tilting his head back to grin at the albino. "What are you going to do without me in the big city, darlin'?" Karkat laughed, earning a softer smile from Dave.

"Starve probably. I'm about as good at cooking as my mom is at being a parent."

"Yeah, who's going to order your pizza for you without someone to talk to those big bad people at Dominos?" The boys erupted into quiet laughter, breaking the tense atmosphere. They laughed for long minutes, even though the joke wasn't that funny. They laughed because it might be that last time they'd get to sit like this and just be Dave and Karkat. They both had the weight of the world on their shoulders, and laughed it off like little kids.

When they'd finally run out their mirth, the sky was turning scarlet, the two quieting completely to watch it as it slowly faded into vermillion.

"Hey, Karkles. Look what I found this morning." His vision was suddenly obscured by a square piece of paper, the white-haired boy papping Dave roughly on the head before taking it. It was an old polaroid of the two of them that Dave's bro had taken when they were nine, the two boys who refused to come out of the tree when it was time for Karkat to go back home. It had been his birthday, one of the best, one of the ones he didn't have to spend with his trash family. It had been him and Dave for an entire day, skipping school to explore the state property behind the abandoned ranch.

He had forgotten about it.

"'Kay, I lied. I didn't find it this morning." He looked back down at the blonde, waiting for an explanation. "This probably sounds gay as fuck, but I've kept that thing in my nightstand drawer. I remember us when we weren't completely caught up in all this bullshit, and we were, you know, us. I used to think..." He stopped, sighing. "I used to think if I could get you to stay, we could go back to that. That we could go back to that and _stay _like that. But, I see now that... that..." Karkat's fingers tightened on the the tiny piece of paper, beginning to say something, but stopping half-way there, and looking back at the photo.

They weren't smiling. Hell, it looked like Karkat was ready to murder somebody, and Dave looked ready to help, and that was the thing. They were willing to do it _together_. Was he really going to leave that all behind?

"'Thought about tellin' your parents so they'd make you stay, but now I see that you're a fucking bird, Vantas. You aren't meant to be caged." With a pang at the back of his throat, Karkat found it hard to respond.

"D-Dave~"

"Nope. I don't want to hear it. And keep the photo. I think you need it more than I do." Dave stared blankly ahead, Karkat only catching a glimpse of his eye around the side of his shades. He didn't know why he bothered with them anymore; Karkat knew what his eyes looked like.

When the air lacked a response, Dave looked back at him, and even through his shades, the albino could see his eyes soften. "'Wasn't supposed to get you to stay, Kitkat. 'Just don't forget what you're leavin' behind, you hear?" Karkat closed his open mouth before nodding, swallowing past the lump in his throat.

The harsh bark of the Zahhaks' dog shattered the silence, jerking the boys from the revere, both looking back up towards the sunrise. Karkat smiled slightly, a slight breeze catching the corners of the photograph.

"'Couldn't ever forget you, douchebag."

"I know you'll be thinkin' of me every second of the day, sweetheart." The two remained in blissful silence for a few more long minutes, no words exchanged between them but everything being yelled at the top of their lungs.

After what seemed like an eternity, Karkat sighed, snuffing out his cigarette on the fencepost next to him, as he had done many times before, and tucked the picture safely into his pocket. He had to leave, now, or he knew he would stay.

"Well, if I want to hitch a ride on the train, I should go now." He hopped off the fence, landing easily with an explosion of dust from his feet and started walking. He knew Dave wouldn't want any more goodbye than that; neither would be able to handle it.

"Don't you forget little ol' me, now. I expect postcards." The albino shook his head, grinning and waving over his shoulder. The sound of Dave's laughter followed him until he reached the end of the road, at which he turned back to look at the blonde.

Dave was watching him, arms crossed and face less-blank than usual. It was more slack, and from the distance Karkat stood at, he even seemed to be frowning, eyebrows knitted together. He looked... sad.

His claret gaze met Dave's cerise one, and the blonde opened his mouth partially to say something, then closed it and raised one hand in a salute, in a last, farewell wave.

He had to turn quickly away to stop himself from going back, a jabbing pain in his chest as his fingers found the polaroid in his sweatshirt pocket. He couldn't think about what he was leaving behind, about the words he was leaving unsaid. No, he had to focus on what he was doing _then_, and... and surely Dave already knew.

A small smile quirked the corner of his lips up, and sent a silent promise back to the blonde that he'd be back, before he resumed walking, and heard Dave's laugh one last time, as if he understood everything he had been trying to say.

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**A/N**: Wrote this at two in the morning, so please don't judge spelling or grammar errors. In fact, tell me about them so I can fix them! ^-^

I had a really, really vivid idea for this, and it didn't come nearly as vibrant as I wanted, but I've spent enough time trying to polish it. So here, something from my to-scrap notebook. I hope you enjoy the insomniatic drabbles of a teenage fangirl.

Ciao,

Webs


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